Loki comes back, with Elspeth. "Hey Cam, in that universe our alt is the empress of a vampire shadow government. Her name's Bella. Elspeth is her daughter."

"Nobody here mentioned that?"

"I actually did notice the resemblance but it wasn't immediately striking - and I just learned there were such a thing as alts."

"You said your mother might remove me from power so I was disinclined to suggest fetching her." He's still clutching Findekano.

Wow, he kind of has not learned the lesson he might have taken from the thing where he tried to avoid letting Elspeth find out.

Anyway, Elspeth's mama matches her alts all three of them as described by Loki perfectly well without any evil-Maitimo-like discrepancies. Watching them figure that out was kind of fun. Mama shielded Loki from mindreading and they had the most high-context conversation Elspeth has ever seen between people who have never met. So, Elspeth doesn't really know Loki or Cam but she knows her mama and she knows they match and she is here to be explanatory that the other Maitimos are in fact not evil (Loki knows hers really well, the space one back when there was only one space one was in fact actually broken up with his Findekáno and did not do anything about that until Loki's ones intervened, Iobel's ones were broken up for a while too and Iobel is pretty sure she would know if there were anything sketchy going on). Evil Maitimo is just weird. It is disappointing. You suck, Evil Maitimo. The Bells do not want anything from Findekáno and especially do not want to dispense him to any Maitimos, they want him to not feel like he has to be dispensed to Maitimos. Including this one. Mostly this one.

"...okay. Thanks. So what are you trying to accomplish here?"

"Here, like, what is our complete found-an-Arda checklist, or, here, like, what's the endgame with the Evil Maitimo?"

"Both, I guess."

"This is only the third Arda we've found and it's not exactly like either of the others so we don't have anything particularly standardized besides 'kill the Enemy', which already failed to go as planned, and 'retrieve dead people', which I am hesitating to go full speed ahead on because we don't know why this Maitimo is evil and if this is just Land of the Evil Alts or something - I mean this as the highest possible compliment to Fëanor but I really don't want to meet an evil version of him. Elspeth vouches for you in particular but did say that you seemed unusual. With respect to your personal situation, like she - magicked - we would like you not to feel in any way, including by way of requiring him as a resource for anything you would like done, like you need to go around belonging to any number of Maitimos greater than zero if that does not happen to suit you moment to moment. And you sort of keep saying things that indicate that we have not successfully convinced you of that."

"If you still need me you should get Jake, he'll be worried even with the note I left."

"Don't know if we'll need you or not, one sec -" She blinks out and back and deposits a dozing fellow in flannel pajamas on the floor.

"Someone still needs to run this country and I don't think I can do it alone. And if you're not bringing back any of the dead you should probably find a way to kill them off for real, I wouldn't wish an eternity alone in Mandos on the Enemy himself."

"...yeah, I know, I am not a terrible person, thanks, I'm just going to be slightly more circumspect than popping over to the planet my set of Noldor live on and asking them if they'd like the local set dropped on them or should I find somewhere else, bam, done in an hour, I want to know what happened here. What do you need to run the country? If you need a Maitimo in particular there are extras from Space Arda. They can teleport if they want to commute. I am quite confident none of them want to have abusive relationships."

He frowns. "I am not sure how Maitimo's brothers, who are the relevant quantity here, are going to do on not starting a war if their brother's deposed and taken off planet in favor of an alternate universe version of him. And while I trust your judgment on other Maitimos not wanting to control me, this one's sworn not to."

"...are they evil too. Who all is evil here."

"Most people. The Dwarves are fine."

"Dwarves: Still Great In The Bizarro Universe."

"...would Maitimo not have been able to get away with it? In your worlds? That's a rather significant difference."

"I'm not sure I want to so confidently bound what he could have gotten away with if he set his mind to it because there are borderline supernatural amounts of charisma going on but they would not have tried, even if they could have pulled it off."

"Yes, you've clarified that, what I'm curious about is whether you've got a population who'd disobey an order to drag someone to his bedroom generally."

"I do think it would have required considerable application of the supernatural charisma to get that accepted, yes, albeit only partially for decent reasons."

"I'm trying to evaluate how much of the difference is attributable to different upbringings and surrounding cultural assumptions."

"...he ruffled your hair in front of me. Space Maitimo's ears went pink when I told him that a shampoo commercial was banned on Valinor and showed him what I was talking about."

"I mean, that's not generally acceptable here, either - neither's short hair - that's just the King being above the law."

"Probably inappropriate or something but things I can make include hair attached to existing hair. If you don't actually like it short."